Freight rates on pinto beans

              NEW MEXICO COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE AND MECHANIC ARTS
AND AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION
FREIGHT RATES ON PINTO BEANS
New Mexico ranks second among the states in the production of pinto beans, accounting for about 27 percent of the nation's crop. Average yearly production for
all states during the 10 years 1931-1940 was 1,666,000 bags of cleaned beans. Of
this amount, average output for Colorado was 934,000; for New Mexico, 454,000; and
for California, 170,000.
Competition in the marketing of this crop is keen. This is because production
_s concentrated in one general area, with Colorado and New Mexico producing about
83 percent of the nation's crop, and also because the beans are marketed in a rather
restricted territory. The center of the pinto bean'market is in the Southwest and
extends east to include Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky,
Virginia, West Virginia, and bordering states.
With such closely competitive market conditions, rather small differences in
transportation costs give undue advantage to the area with lower freight costs.
This report compares the freight rates on pinto beans from Mountainair and
Deming, New Mexico, with rates from Denver, Colorado, to 18 representative markets
in 13 of the states in which pinto beans are sold. Mountainair, Estancia, and
Deming are the three leading bean shipping stations in New Mexico. The rates from
Mountainair were obtained to represent rates effective in 1945 from the Estancia
Valley area of central New Mexico, Deming, located in the southwestern part of
the state, is the largest shipping point in New Mexico for pinto beans grown under
Of the rates studied, the New Mexico freight costs to every market except those
in Texas and Arkansas,exceed the rates from Denver. The average rate per hundredweight from Mountainair to 18 markets is 16 cents higher than the Denver rate to
these markets, and from Deming, 28 cents higher. Twenty-five percent of the difference between Denver and Mountainair rates is due to greater distance from the markets
and 75 percent is caused by a higher rate per mile. Stated in another way, when
beans are marketed in carlot quantities, one dollar will purchase on the average,
from Denver to these markets, 2,398 miles of transportation for a sack of beans; from
Mountainair, 1,930 miles; and from Deming, 1,913 miles. These data indicate that
the advantage in rates enjoyed by Denver shippers is largely the result of a lower
rate per mile to these markets. The typography of the country over which the beans
are shipped from Colorado and from New Mexico is practically the same, but, as indicated previously, the production in Colorado is practically double that of New
Mexico. It is a general practice to grant somewhat lower rates per mile to shippers
in areas having large volume of shipments. Data presented in table 1 show the rate
comparisons between the three shipping points. The through rate in cents per hundredweight indicates the actual advantage enjoyed by Colorado shippers. The rate
expressed in cents per ton-mile explains the principal cause of rate variations between Colorado and New Mexico shipping points. The rates in cents per ton-mile
from Mountainair and Deming to the 18 markets average 22 and 28 percent, respectively, above those from Denver.